


well, i painted a picture from the blood in your face

by londondungeon2



Category: Solar Opposites
Genre: Alternate Universe - High School, Bad Parenting, Bilungromans, Emotional/Psychological Abuse, Human AU, Internalized Homophobia, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-28
Updated: 2020-05-28
Packaged: 2021-03-02 20:48:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,039
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24423043
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/londondungeon2/pseuds/londondungeon2
Summary: "Who do you love when nobody loves you?"
Relationships: Korvotron "Korvo"/Terry (Solar Opposites)
Comments: 13
Kudos: 50





	well, i painted a picture from the blood in your face

Terry fiddles with two designs: the alphabetical thread of Korvo’s name on his tongue and the little blotter on his fingers. The pink muscle adores it’s pronunciation. He makes a game of adding little suffixes to it - like Korvotron, Korvy, Korvtholomew. Twiddling, he murmurs the name to himself - too quiet. His lips only inch up to be heard by himself, not to siren in attention. 

From Korvo's ears, one studded with an emerald eye that Terry did with a pinkening needle in parental mutiny, ivory wires dangle. He is listening to symphonies, harp strings plucking and piano keys stepping, for benefits that studies preach. Wilting paper hangs over his knobby knees. 

They were supposed to study the SATs together but Terry is never one for studying. He ignores school to stare at Korvo. A pensile cowlick from slicked hair falls over his furrowed brow, a barb of blue dye and natural black. Veins move in his neck streamlined. His face is tightening, nervous thumb pushing at his mechanical pencil. Under the fuschia light of a plastic pumpkin’s open jaw - the only Halloween decor allowed in the room, a gift from Terry - something seems orphic about his sharp profile. 

Tongue still running over the centipede edges of his name, Terry tries to figure it out. Is he hiding something from me? No, that’s not like him. Korvo is a straight-forward and veristic person. 

The dextral, right-facing, side of Korvo’s brain rots and gathers holes like a termite’s driftwood home. He often does not scrutinize - never spends too long squinting at stars or oceans, never long enough to ponder. Terry can imagine his tangling right lobes spill out from his ears, red dust on brown skin. Often again, Korvo is ‘bad’ with people, rather having equations as companions and out-of-place Terry who is still hesitant to start an acid trip.

Terry told Korvo, traveling down the corridor to his parked SUV, that he had no plan to stay on Earth with him and daringly showed off his new blotters - ones Korvo hastily snatch and hide in his hoodie so a teacher does not catch a glimpse of his friend’s carelessness. But, now in this finite space, he wishes to linger in reality.

His gaze transitions down to the patchwork blotter in hand. A pink elephant with ebon pie-eyes returns the look. With a sawtooth nail, he places his finger over the eyes; they remind him too much of the zoo, when they were only _kids_. They are juniors now who are supposed to be studying for the SATs.

Instead of a name, the pink muscle in his mouth bullets out other words. “Who do you love when nobody loves you?”

The answer lies in clicking and rustling. Found in the prep papers on Korvo’s stone lap. ‘Emotions are overrated’ spells the graphing calculator on the blue quilt, mimicking those insular castle-walls built over a weak heart. The most overrated emotion is love, Korvo tells him unspoken with a shuffle of his PSATs.

Terry thinks back to when Korvo’s parents had taken away his phone for getting a B on some essay; he remembers the night in bed, pulling at his screen to watch white lines spiral and catatonic messages gather time, wondering why his Yoda meme is going unlaughed at. Day follows an insomniac night. Korvo explains and Terry says he will start sending memes with his green parrot; normalcy bleeds back in.

He never forgets the initial shock from the explanation. Strict punishments are nothing new from Korvo’s parents - they regard money above health - but to Terry, the measures seem extreme. The end justifies the means, yes? 

Buried deep in him is a memory of Korvo’s mother hitting him across the face, briskly walking into their study session, over an eighty-six percent grade on a Trigonometry test. Watching it was surreal; “Hello, Mrs. Delgado” is still caught in his throat like a giant roach. Heels stomp in then a piercing slap bounces off the walls. The sound of heels are already diminishing as Terry, eyes blown, watches Korvo touch his cheek as if looking through a kaleidoscope. Ruby burns on his dark cheek and drips from his nose. The next day is worse though.

Dilating in and out of that fateful morning, he observes the crinkle of crawling fabric, how the cloth is readjusting constantly. And, as he does through chemistry, english, study, and art in advertising, and insectual ticks of decimaling clock-hands, wishes to tear apart the turtleneck arise. No one wears such heavy, congesting outfits in May unless they are hiding something. Terry has always been superior at seeking compared to Korvo.

During lessons on triangles, the sight of Korvo sponging at his lower throat piques the loose interest of the same watchful student.

Terry jokes about him being cold-blooded - hoodies still in the laundry cycle in summer. Jokes mask the face of genuine concern, as Korvo is prone to leaning on objects to catch his breath when school is out. Grievously, Terry has gotten used to the weight of an unconscious Korvo slipping into his arms. The reason is insidious. 

In the stuffy classroom, Korvo smolders and licks his bottom lip as if delirious with thirst. White blades shake back and forth nearby, a low rumbling that only spreads out the heat. Raking his hands through wettening hair, there is a crinkle of skin. Terry watches a wince form as the purple rose-garden on his neck squeezes.

Terry waits until the teacher’s spine faces the class. Green ink scribbles quickly, smearing on his left hand. It is enough, throwing the ripped triangle from the bottom of his worksheet at Korvo.

“I got some bruisy-stuff in my glovebox, skip civics with me?” Bruisy-stuff refers to Arnica Montana - a gel for pain relief. Next to splotchy words, some misspelled, is a smiley face with a mouth of barbed teeth. Terry watches a blue pen jostle over the paper. 

Through the endless cotton fields in his head, soft and distractible, Terry thinks: _I rather cover you in hickeys than have someone cover in bruises._ Each knuckle is to be replaced. Feeling his own bones plunge into an idle cheek, Terry wants to make that aging promise, rather an aging vow, ring true.

To be honest, he has it all blueprinted out inside his mind. Dollar bills for a ring, white sneakers, and billowing cloud dress lay in the unused box of Monopoly, on the top shelf of his closet. His mediocre job at a supermarket and summer landscaping are all for that purpose. 

Eventually, the teacher rotates her spine and catches Terry’s diverting face. She calls out with no hesitation. “Terry, can you answer question five, triangle B for the class?” 

A smirk filters over his face. Satisfaction is rich as he looks down at his lap - no longer empty - tucking the positive response in the cubbyhole of his mind _and_ reading the answer to question five, triangle B for the class aloud.

Yet there is another question, sleeping in stagnant air, that needs an answer; “Who do you love when nobody loves you?” Terry lays across the queen quilt, his legs penduluming in boredom, scrutinizing over Korvo who pulls back the dry skin of his lips with enamel in thought.

“You love me.” Terry speaks Korvo’s confession - knowing the latter has to be pried open like the salt-stained lips of a clam to sieve the ivory heart. With a simple motion of bones, he turns his neck away from the booklet and snares him into a kiss. Resistance is short.

•••

Korvo’s parents often compare Terry to a ball-and-shackle. In their dictating hold over their son, their son’s best friend is seen as a distraction, a cast-iron globe. And as the illusion of Terry drags down Korvo by his ankle, pulling him deep into nebulous violet so dark it seems black, there is a layer of thick ice above. Terry knows, fingers tight on the steering wheel, that the sky of ice is equivalent to Korvo’s parents.

From the wheel, the metaphoric manacles delicately watches Korvo scale down from his window. He moves, precautious of each bone in his body. Feet slip over singles, find the indent in loose gutter, and jump off the railing.

Korvo closes the passenger door. Timorous, he keeps down his head and sends glances towards his house. He is waiting for the box on top left to bloom into a square of canary yellow, piercing down into a tunnel towards the SUV. Pale fingers find the roots of his bluish-black hair. Scared eyes greet his best friend.

“Hey.”

“Hey.”

Terry winces and brushes out the last of sleep from his ( ~~boyfriend’s~~ ) friend’s hair. He tells him that he has rented out a midnight bowling alley for them. Korvo, who brought his books with him, nestled under his black coat as Terry knows the contours well on his slim form, moves the hand from his head.

He wants to say he notices the black eye, the reddish trauma under his once tearful blue eye, even though he is trying to hide it in glaces to a far window. But, inside his mouth, his tongue feels like a dead mole. What can he say?

A single glance is cast - like a fishing line needling out into abyssal blue - to the road. Spectral waves of headlights wash over the cracked and muddy road. Eyes focusing on the balance beam of white from under his tire, a certain emotion twists him in a chopstick-like manner. Why can’t life be linear? However, life seems to always end in a pitfall from a snaking vine. 

“When I’m your husband, no one is going to hit you anymore.” The word stings like a snowfall of salt into peeled, blooming rose red flesh. Korvo never allows him to speak the word boyfriends. Terry grabs him by the neck so he can read all the blueprints of their future inscribed in glossy black and blue wedding rings.

•••

In their entire school, Korvo scores the third highest on his SATs - and though Terry hates to admit it, having to knock down pins by his lonesome, he is proud of Korvo’s outrageous intelligence. Despite this happy outcome, it stings Terry as he rests by his best friend’s knee. Some fancy school like Havard or something will most likely be beckoning for his friend. They are juniors now, done with their SATs and only biting at finite time until college. Terry reflects on his future, imagines returning from his dirt-poor community college to a home where everyone ignores him. Laying in a house where everyone pays too close attention, he wonders aloud “, Who do you love if nobody loves you?”

Korvo looks up from his book (“The Snow of Kilimanjaro and Other Stories” by Ernest Hemingway) and sets down the ivory white, fawn brown striped, paperback on a billowing quilt. Something indescribable glides across his face, Terry mistakes it for a fuchsia pumpkin’s light. “You love whoever once loved you.”

“Easier said than done. Even if they once loved you, once upon a time type shit, they don’t anymore. You shouldn’t love anyone,” Terry debates, picking up the abandoned paperback. He flicks the dogeared page. “You should just stop loving.”

“Then what would you do with me?”

He has half a mind to say that he will throw him out. Instead, he bites his tongue until metallic spills into the bowl of his jaw. Terry peels rougher at the dogear, trying to distract himself. Long ago, he was restricted from saying ‘I love you’ or addressing them as boyfriends, still is. “You loved me?”

Korvo glances at the door, dreading. He speaks in a tiny whisper like a trickle of rain before a thunderstorm, a drop on the nose. “You should be using present tense, love.” There is no kiss, he fears the sound of heels. Yet, he presses one finger on the pale chin and smiles. It is enough, it is enough.

On their graduation day, Terry buys Korvo a ring with his allowance and makes him promise that when he goes to Vanderbilt - not Havard but close enough - that if he ever takes off the ring, he takes off his left arm with it too.


End file.
